NOUN: noun
NOUN : noun
Definition
Nouns typically denote entities such as persons, places, things, animals or ideas.
The tag NOUN is intended for common nouns only. See PROPN for proper nouns and PRON for pronouns.
Certain nouns are strongly related with adjectives, e.g. ακουστικό / akoustiko “head phone/hearing aid”. Being nouns, they disallow the formation of comparatives (but not all adjectives allow for comparatives anyway).
Modern Greek expresses degree modification of nouns with a variety of morphological (and syntactic) means:
- Diminutives (υποκοριστικά / ipokoristika) productively formed with suffixes such as –άκι / -aki, –ιτσα / -itsa, –ούλης / -oulis, -άκης / -akis, -άκιας / -akias like χταποδάκι / chtapodaki “little octopus”, παιδάκι / pedaki “little child”, μικρούλα / mikroula “little girl”, φωνίτσα / fonitsa “little voice”: they are assigned the lemma of the original noun and the feature Degree takes the value Dim .
- Augmentatives (μεγεθυντικά / megethintika) productively formed with suffixes such as -άρας / -aras, -αράς / -aras like τρυπάρα / tripara “large hole”, ψευταράς / pseftaras “great lier”: they are assigned the lemma of the original noun and the feature [Degree] takes the value Aug.
- Lexicalised diminutives and augmentatives such as λακκάκι ‘dimple’, σουβλάκι / souvlaki “roasted pieces of meat on a little spit”, παιχταράς / pechtaras “excellent (football) player” are not defined for the feature Degree.
Greek nouns inflect for el-feat/Gender, el-feat/Number and el-feat/Case. Certain nouns do not inflect, e.g., δοξαπατρί / doksapatri “right between the eyes”, τουμπεκί / toubeki “tombako used in a hookah”. Such words often occur as cranberry words in multiword expressions.
Examples
- γυναίκα / gineka “woman”, σκύλος / skilos “dog”, τραπέζι / trapezi “table”, επανάσταση / epanastasi “revolution”, ελευθερία / freedom “liberty”
- Professions such as αστυνομικός / astinomikos “policeman”, στρατιωτικός / stratiotikos “military officer”. When the same words cooccur with another noun, such as αστυνομικός σκύλος / astinomikos skilos “police dog”, they are assigned the tag
ADJ. - ακουστικό / akoustiko “head phone/hearing aid”, (καρτο-)κινητό / (karto-)kinito “mobile phone (with a card)”, ενδότερα / endotera “inner parts”, πρωϊνό / proino “breakfast”, μεσημεριανό / mesimeriano “lunch”, βραδινό / vradino “dinner”, λαδερά / ladera “vegetable dishes cooked in olive oil”, λαϊκή “open market”, περιπολικό / peripoliko “patrol car”, etc.
References
Karra, Athanasia. 2006. Problems of inflection and of diminutives formatino in Modern Greek and the other European systems. PhD Thesis (in Greek). University of Patras. https://nemertes.library.upatras.gr/jspui/bitstream/10889/911/1/Nimertis_Karra.pdf
NOUN in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [ca] [cs] [cy] [da] [el] [en] [es] [ess] [et] [eu] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [grc] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [yue] [zh]